


Granola Cookies

by CactusPot



Category: Total Drama (Cartoon)
Genre: Baking, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Jo be like 'what is unconditional positive regard idk her', Post-Canon, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28164303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CactusPot/pseuds/CactusPot
Summary: Jo slid off the counter and watched Brick pat down the sugar with a spoon. “You call that packed?” she demanded. “Cram this stuff like your life depends on it!”“I think it’s compact enough,” Brick protested. To prove his point, he tilted the measuring cup. Not a single crystal of sugar fell out.“It better be,” Jo said. “It would be unacceptable to bake anything less than five-star cookies.”“Which is why I’m baking, and you’re reading directions.” With a cheerful grin on his face, Brick turned over the measuring cup and tapped its base. Into the mixing bowl fell the sugar. Thwump.
Relationships: Jo/Brick McArthur
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	Granola Cookies

“Next is two cups of brown sugar,” Jo said, eyeing Brick over the recipe sheet. “Packed.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Brick tipped the sugar bag into the tin measuring cup, and Jo smiled. It was kinda weird how often she smiled nowadays. Even weirder was the fact she was sitting on Brick’s kitchen counter, reading aloud from his family’s favorite cookie recipe. She didn’t even _like_ cookies. Champion athletes required proper fueling, and cookies were not a part of that.

Jo slid off the counter and watched Brick pat down the sugar with a spoon. “You call that packed?” she demanded. “Cram this stuff like your life depends on it!”

“I think it’s compact enough,” Brick protested. To prove his point, he tilted the measuring cup. Not a single crystal of sugar fell out.

“It better be,” Jo said. “It would be unacceptable to bake anything less than five-star cookies.”

“Which is why _I’m_ baking and _you’re_ reading directions.” With a cheerful grin on his face, Brick turned over the measuring cup and tapped its base. Into the mixing bowl fell the sugar. _Thwump_.

Yeah, she’d been banned from the kitchen because she sucked at cooking. So what? 

“I prefer telling you what to do, anyway,” Jo said.

Brick laughed, turned, and kissed her on the cheek. “What’s next?” he asked, even though he’d probably had the recipe memorized since birth.

They’d been dating two months—since mid-November—and Jo still hadn’t gotten used to the random casual affection Brick insisted on giving her. Her face burned as if she’d forgotten sunscreen before running the Canada Day 5k.

“Um, right.” Jo cleared her throat and scanned the paper. “Two sticks of butter, slightly melted. After that, we blend it.”

Lorraine—Brick’s older sister, on break from her first semester of college—walked into the kitchen. Jo instinctively half-stepped away from Brick.

“Save some for me,” Lorraine said as she rummaged around in the fridge. Typical college students. Always starving. 

“Roger that.” Brick ducked as she chucked two butter sticks over her shoulder. Jo caught them, flashed a self-satisfied smirk at her boyfriend, and set the butter on the counter.

“There’s no food in this dang house.” Lorraine shut the door and locked eyes with Jo. “Hey, Jo. If you give me your number, I’ll send you some embarrassing photos of this dork.”

“Alright, time to go!” Brick handed the mixing bowl to Jo and marched over to push Lorraine out of the kitchen. “I think Mom wants you to take out the trash.”

“I want those photos!” Jo yelled after them.

Brick returned to the kitchen. “I regret to inform you those files are classified.” He held out his hands, expecting to reunite with the mixing bowl.

Jo, smirking, withheld it from him. “This is your classic hostage situation,” she said. “I’ll trade the dough for some funny baby photos.” No doubt they’d be a gold mine for nickname inspiration.

“This is a war crime,” Brick insisted as he reached for the bowl. Jo planted her hand on his chest to stop him from advancing further.

“C’mon, I’ve seen you at your worst. Nothing can beat the time you peed your pants on national television.”

Brick glared at her. “Fine. I concede defeat. After we get the cookies in the oven, I’ll retrieve some humiliating family photo albums.” 

Jo pumped a fist in the air. “Yes!”

Without any other interruptions, they finished making the batter. Jo helped scoop the dough onto the cookie sheet since that was the one part of the process impossible for her to screw up. Once Brick had slid the trays into the oven, Jo dragged him down to his basement to find the albums.

Brick dug through the bookshelf at the back of the room. “You’re really making me do this.”

“You know it.” From her spot on the couch, Jo flashed him a winning smile. “I’ll show you my childhood photos the next time we’re at my house.” 

“But we don’t hang out at your house!”

Jo cackled. “Exactly!”

Brick begrudgingly sat down beside her, a photo album in hand. Jo swiped at it, but he batted her hands away.

“Hey!”

“I’m going to hold it,” Brick said firmly.

“Fine, fine.” Jo rested her arm on his shoulder and leaned in. “Let’s see what you got.”

With a heavy sigh, Brick opened the photo album. Jo was laughing immediately. The first spread displayed several shots of Brick at Sargent Junior Boot Camp, a gleeful smile on his face as he paraded around a sash of badges.

The best part was no doubt his boots, miniatures of his current pair that were still two sizes too big on toddler Brick. “Boot camp really takes boots literally, huh?”

“Can’t really do basic training in sandals,” Brick mumbled.

“Lemme count your badges.” Jo got up to seven before Brick flipped the page.

There were photos of Brick and his sisters playing in the mud; Brick running around, waving a Canadian flag in the air; Brick dressed as an angel at his school’s Christmas pageant.

One snapshot, in particular, had Jo howling. “Dude, this is _gold_!” She pointed to one of a ten-year-old red-faced Brick bawling his eyes out; in the background stood a stoic-faced crown holding a balloon.

“That was my worst Halloween ever,” Brick admitted with an abashed chuckle.

“ _Clearly_ ,” Jo laughed.

“Alrighty then, I think you’ve seen enough.” He started closing the album.

“Aw, don’t be like that.” Jo slid her hand in between the pages, preventing him from closing it entirely. “You were a cute kid. And you know I don’t use the c-word lightly.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re pretty cute yourself,” Brick answered.

“Hey!” Jo spluttered, her cheeks again turning involuntarily red. She was too distracted to react when Brick pulled away the album and snapped it shut. “I do mind you saying that!”

“It’s true, though.” He was grinning like it was his goal to fluster her. Which it was. And the worst part was the fact it was working. Jo hated that. _Get a grip_. She was gonna get him back for this.

“Compliment me on something that actually matters,” she quipped. “Like my shot put record.” _That_ , she could handle.

“You’re a great shot-putter,” Brick said. “You know I’ve never actually seen you throw a shot put, correct?”

“Don’t need to see it to know it.” Jo stuck her tongue out at him. “Can you let me see the clown photo again?”

“Negative that.”

“Come on! I love that thing!” She was considering taking a picture to set as her phone wallpaper.

“You know what I love?”

Jo raised an eyebrow. “ _What_?”

 _This is a setup_ , whispered the tiny voice in her head. Oh, shoot. It totally was.

“I lov—”

“Hey!” she yelled to shut him up. “Don’t say it. I wanna say it first.”

Brick’s eyebrows rose in bewilderment. “What? Why?”

“Just ‘cause.” There was no specific reason. It wasn’t a competition or anything. She just felt an unshakeable need to say it first.

Brick stared expectantly at her. Jo stared back, unblinking. If this was the start of a staring contest, she’d definitely destroy him.

“Are you gonna say it?” he asked after the silence stretched out too long.

Jo made a face. “Not right _now_.”

“Then when?”

“Doesn’t matter.” She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Bottom line: you can’t say it until I say it.” Jo smugly saluted him. “That’s an order.”

“Sorry, what exactly are you intending to say?”

In the split second before Jo answered, the voice in her head whispered, _This is another setup_. “Very clever, Halloweenie. Props for trying, but you won’t trick me that easy!” She punched his shoulder amicably.

At the same moment, the oven timer chirped upstairs.

“Cookies are done!” Jo hopped to her feet. “Race ya upstairs.”

She won, of course, since Brick stopped to put away the photo album. What a dork. In the kitchen, Jo grabbed oven mitts and pulled the cookie trays out of the oven.

“Good news,” Jo announced when Brick finally rejoined her. “These don’t suck.” The cookies met her two criteria for satisfaction: they weren’t colored pitch-black and they didn’t smell like charcoal.

“I think this mission was a success,” Brick agreed.

They played paper football while they waited for the cookies to cool. The competition was fierce, and Jo declared the game finished once she’d scored her tenth point.

“All hail the reigning paper football champion,“ she declared as she walked over to the stove. “Ready to test these babies?”

“Affirmative.” Brick handed her a cookie and then took one for himself.

They took their bites simultaneously. The cookie was pretty good, in Jo’s opinion, especially since they’d added granola, which was leagues better than just a boring ol’ sugar cookie.

She looked over at Brick, still chewing on his cookie. Totally unsuspecting. The perfect victim.

Maybe in any other situation, Jo would’ve hesitated. But here and now, her desire to fluster Brick superseded her incompetence with verbally expressing emotions. 

_Here goes nothing_.

In between cookie bites, Jo said, “Hey, Brick-for-brains.”

“Hmm?” He looked up from his cookie, and she smirked.

“I love you.”

In the next moment, Brick was doubled-over, hacking up a lung. Jo performed her own version of the Heimlich: a hearty slap on the back. Cookie crumbs sprayed everywhere.

“What the heck was that?” she demanded.

“What was _that_?” Brick countered, rubbing his throat. “That came out of nowhere!”

“That was payback for calling me cute.” She hadn’t meant to make him choke on his cookie, but, hey, he was fine now. “You didn't have to almost die over it.”

Lorraine popped her curly-haired, nosy head into the kitchen. “Thought I heard someone dying.”

“That would be this guy.” Jo patted Brick’s shoulder.

“Rest in peace.” Lorraine strolled over and stacked a row of cookies in her arm. “I’ll see you at the funeral, Jo.”

Once Lorraine was safely out of the kitchen, Brick spoke again. “I thought you’d wait for another few months before saying anything remotely close to that.”

“You looked so peaceful eating that cookie.” Jo nodded at the half-eaten granola cookie in his hand. “I just _had_ to ruin it.”

“Well,” Brick said, setting the cookie aside, “it is my duty to inform you, ma’am, that I love you, too.”

There went her face, on fire again. 

_I’m not getting used to this anytime soon_ was Jo’s second-to-last thought before she leaned in to kiss him. Her final thought was _If Lorraine walks in, I’m moving to Newfoundland_.

**Author's Note:**

> writing this made me go into catatonic shock bc baking cookies,,, so soft,,, couple goals,,, i absolutely cannot relate in the slightest
> 
> haha jock goes brrrr


End file.
